This Way
by SoaringSilverWing
Summary: There are things he can do, and there are things he can't. By nature, by practice, and by his state of mind. The fearless strength on the battlefield doesn't translate to boundless strength of mind, he is after all, human too, human enough to care at least. - I considered naming it Walk This Way but I changed my mind, what do you think?
This way
Takasugi Shinsuke/Kawakami Bansai

Takasugi Shinsuke had never been adept at caring. It wasn't to say he couldn't care, he cared plenty, just that it couldn't affect his way of acting. He always found it hard to project a kind or sweet image, to speak words of gratitude or affection, even to convey his emotions through actions. As a child, it hadn't been easy to break away from the shackling words of his father, hadn't been easy to even have it in him to disobey his father, but once the right method had struck him he knew the answer. The best way to avoid the aspect of hurting was to go, to move the instant you were done speaking. His father had been screaming at him for weeks under the impression that his perfect talented son had some sort of distraction or hindrance in his life, and his response had been slow to come, he'd not known what to say or how to move or if he should try to project his opinions? And so he didn't, so he stayed silent and adamantly continued to make his trips to the Shoka Sonjuku as a dojo-yaburi and continued to receive physical repercussions in kind. Once his father had disowned him, and he'd had nowhere to go, that's when he realised what was the right way to protest and move on. He didn't have to put it into action until the Joui war, until Shouyou-sensei was gone all of a sudden, until all at once he'd lost his reason to be alive and follow the fields of light this man created with his smile.

It just hadn't been fair that Gintoki had been the one to kill him, that he would've made the same decision in that position and yet he couldn't not be mad at Gintoki, couldn't not be stark raving mad at himself for not being able to do a damn thing and the war was a harsh place, if he'd taken out his anger right then and there, he'd likely have been killed by an Amanto during the distraction. So he ran.  
Takasugi ran from them in the dead of night at breakneck pace not even stopping to retrieve a change of clothes or anything of the sort, feet slamming against the blood covered soil as he tried to ignore the glassy red orbs on his back because it couldn't be real and he couldn't be watching and if Shouyou-sensei were here, he'd bonk them all on the heads so hard for being up this late. He realises he's always been running, since day one. Running from the fact that he never enjoyed his classes or his duties, running from the admittance that he really wanted to be part of the Shoka Sonjuku, running from Katsura and Gintoki's outstretched hands and Shouyou's warm smile. But moving would keep him alive, moving would distract him and keep survival to his first priority and the gut-wrenching pain a shoved back second. Past the sanguine fields of corpses and ruins of the Amanto war, past Edo itself and then Earth as a whole is where he lost the crazed look of a disbelieving man in shock. He wondered briefly if Gintoki or Katsura had looked for him, if Sakamoto had perhaps returned, or if he'd run into the merchant out here in the cold reaches of space. But the wonder was brief, he didn't care this time because it'd be destructive to see them at this point, he had no idea what even to do with himself.

And then there was Kawakami Bansai. A music producer apparently, by profession, but the furthest from it by action. He was calm, quiet, a heavy presence resonating "Constant" in his life, a man who didn't speak very much. Takasugi had always been the one who kept his mouth shut where everybody else was making merry amusement, to have someone who kept quiet beside him was both a blessing and a frustration at once. Curiousity of a kind he didn't know he possessed struck cold nails into his bloodstream, he wanted to know what the man was thinking, how he felt and what he was interested in, but of course he couldn't put forth such a question and he certainly didn't know how, considering he'd always had those things stated to him without him asking. He knew he should be frustrated and irritated with the blue-haired man, and initially he was perhaps, but it died down to a low thrum of desire to know as the years drew along and Bansai proved the nature of his aura by staying exactly by his side, asking quiet questions slowly and largely spaced through the months. It wasn't to say Bansai didn't talk, he did, but not as much as he was used to and not in words he could take literally. The man was something of a poet, speaking in words of songs and a strum of his instrument, a faint smile and a tilt of his dark shades that Takasugi swore multiple times he'd rip off his face because not seeing his eyes was disconcerting, that is, after all, where most emotion flashes through.

Bansai hadn't truly been joking around by coming to his side, though he had no idea why, and the man had proved it with the blatant risk of his life on several occasions, brushing off doctors who stopped by later with a shake of the head. Takasugi wasn't capable of whispering a thank you or even voicing the question lodged in his throat, 'Why?'  
And yet, he'd trusted Bansai with the Kiheitai multiple times, a position that he hadn't given anyone else throughout the years. He hadn't planned to, certainly not because if so he wouldn't have been able to, he just mumbled it out past his sleep-dredged lips on a particularly bad day where his left eye itched and burned like poison ivy. Bansai asks, one day, with a pause to the shamisen playing if he could perhaps try to treat his eye a little when it hurt. Takasugi hadn't answered, he didn't think himself capable of knowing the right answer, and so only blew a heavy coil of smoke out through his lips and blinked through the silence as if he wasn't aware the man had said anything at all. The shamisen resumed, in a tune he probably recognised, and the music seemed to drift through the room in swinging waves even long after the musician had left. Bansai's presence was an anchor, but also a ghost, an echo, a genuine smile.

Takasugi's hands are shredded and in blood soaked bandages after a fight and so when Bansai walks through the door following a knock, he looks up and gestures for the other to sit by him. Bansai doesn't look contempt, doesn't tease, doesn't chuckle, and sits wordlessly knowing full well had it been anybody else he would've grabbed his sword the minute they entered the room to gut them for entering without his permission in the first place. But sitting isn't what Takasugi wanted to ask, he just isn't sure how, his thumbs graze over his bandages, hisses sloshing unspoken in his throat behind the faint scowl but his hands are stopped. Bansai touched the fingers lightly and separates the limbs, but lets go almost immediately and looks up as if to ask if it's alright to touch. By way of answer, bandaged hands fall in the skin of the other's palms and Bansai has to lean over his knee to inspect the skin, wondering why they bandages were tattered. Then he looks up at the pile of things neatly placed by the cupboard and asks, "Were you trying to take off your eye-bandages, Shinsuke-dono?"  
He doesn't correct the use of his first name, he never has. "And if I was?"  
"Could I offer my help then?"  
Shinsuke only nods, twining away the bloodied cloth from his hands as Kawakami pulls gently and unravels the material covering his left eye. A feather light touch brushes over his sealed eyelid and rests at his cheekbone, but the touch isn't hostile. He doesn't linger either, only a moment longer than necessary before he turns to pick up the spare bandages, and he's stopped. It surprises Takasugi himself so why doesn't Bansai look surprised? He only looks accepting, slightly relieved and perhaps some form of flattered. Sensing his leader's long time will, he takes off his glasses before he scoops up the clean bandages and shuffles closer, turning his hand to hold the other's properly and wait for whatever it is he needed to say. But his partner says nothing, merely reaches for his pipe, resting on the edge of the ash container, and takes a long drag. In that moment, Takasugi looks exhausted, but he looks so young. He's only still a boy, frustrated beyond reason at a fault that isn't his own but is also his entirely, he's confused and angry and so so emptied through, a heart that's had the love scraped out of it like an old vessel, leaving its hollow shell and a broken boy without any will but revenge. Bansai knows his efforts may be negated all at once and he could be decapitated, but he's pulled towards Takasugi who looks so like he wants to be kissed, and what can Bansai do but kiss him?

The air doesn't shift, the wind doesn't howl, and fireworks don't go off anywhere, but his own heart seems to light up in it's quiet cage in a way he didn't think it capable, leaving him to wonder if Takasugi felt that too. He isn't executed on the spot, that's a feat in itself, instead he feels the chapped lips push back against his own, rough and desperate, clawing at the affection Bansai was pouring over him and clutching at the man's sleeves despite his bleeding knuckles. Air rushes into his heavy lungs when he moves back, and Takasugi looks hopeful, in a way that's smothered by an anger at having hope at all. "Shinsuke-dono, may I take your reciprocating as an acceptance to be involved with me?"  
He receives a hum in response, but Takasugi doesn't know how better to respond or which words would work in his favour, he's still so young and he's biting his tongue back, and for Bansai, that soft hum had always been enough. In the same way that smoke and music mingled in the air between them leaving parts of each other in their cheeks and hair and clothes when they parted. He's loyal to Takasugi's Kiheitai first and the man himself holds more importance than his own feelings, so Bansai makes no further move that could imply anything, only wraps the bandage over and through soft purple locks and alabaster skin. After disinfecting his hands, he begins to wrap those in bandages as well, cross stepping his boundaries and kissing each knuckle as he progressed, admiring the flush at the other's neck and across the bridge of his nose, a single chartreuse eye following his movements until all his bandages were replaced and the blood covered ones disposed of. He lets Bansai sit by him as he smokes, hums quietly, almost unnoticeable along to the tune he's forgotten he remembers, and in that moment who they are is enough. Takasugi Shinsuke had never been adept at showing he cared, but Kawakami Bansai seemed to understand anyway.


End file.
